gal, God-fearing, educated, and virtuous men. They sprang from a high quality of pure English stock, and they had raised indeed "choice grain." They founded an enduring empire amid obstacles that two and a half centuries ago might well have seemed appalling. The creed of the Puritans was harsh, their view of life gloomy, and their church intolerant; but their mission, as they conceived it, was a serious one, and the stormy experience of Rhode Island was not calculated elsewhere to encourage looseness in religious thinking. They were enterprising and thrifty to a high degree. In commerce, domestic trade, manufactures, and political sagacity, for nearly two centuries New England easily led all the American colonies. The nation owes much to the wisdom, the energy, and the fortitude of New England colonial statesmen; and New England institutions are to-day in large measure characteristics of the American com ommonwealth. CH. IX.] Middle Colonies. 195 CHAPTER IX. THE COLONIZATION OF THE MIDDLE COLONIES (1609-1700). Bibliographies. 82. References. Winsor's Narrative and Critical History, iii. 411-420, 449-456, 495-516; iv. 409-442, 488-502; Allen's History Topics. Historical Maps. — Nos. 1, 2, and 3, this volume; maps in Winsor, as above; MacCoun's Historical Geography of the United States. General Accounts. - Bancroft (final ed.), i. 475-589; ii. 24-46; Hildreth, i. 136-149, 413-449; ii. 44-78, 171-219; Bryant and Gay, ii. 115–164, 229–267, 319-354, 472–498; iii. 1–36, 170-174; Winsor's Narrative and Critical History, iii. 385-516; iv. 395-502; Lodge's Colonies, pp. 205-311. Special Histories. - Roberts's New York (American Commonwealths Series), i. 1-214; Lossing's Empire State, pp. 1-116; Broadhead's New York, vols. i. and ii.; O'Callaghan's New Netherlands; Schuyler's Colonial New York, vol. i.; Elting's Dutch Village Communities on the Hudson River, Johns Hopkins University Studies, 4th series, No. 1; Jameson's Willem Usselinx, Amer. Hist. Ass. Papers, vol. ii.; Mellick's Story of an Old New Jersey Farm. - Scharf's Delaware, i. 1-116, 146-183; Raum's New Jersey, i. 17-253; Mulford's New Jersey, pp. 9-280.- Egle's Pennsylvania, pp. 17-54; Cornell's Pennsylvania, pp. 15-143. The best Life of Penn is Janney's. - Lamb's History of New York city is the most complete; shorter histories of the city are by Booth and Stone; Scharf and Westcott's History of Philadelphia is valuable. For the educational history of the colonies, see Boone's Education in the United States, pp. 9-60. Contemporary Accounts.-Josselyn's Account of Two Voyages to New England (1675); Budd's Good Order established in Pennsilvania and New Jersey (1685); Penn's Some Account (1681); Sewel's History of Quakers (1722); New York Colonial Documents; Hazard's Annals of Pennsylvania. Hudson's 83. Dutch Settlement (1609–1625). -- IN September, 1609, Hendrik Hudson, an English navigator in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, sailed up the river to which his name discovery. has been given by the English the Dutch called it North River as far as the future site of Albany. He found "that the land was of the finest kind for tillage, and as beautiful as the foot of man ever trod upon." Six weeks earlier Champlain, the commander of New France, had been on the shores of Lake Champlain about one hundred miles to the north, fighting the native Iroquois. The object of Hudson's search was a familiar one in his time, the discovery of a waterpassage through the continent that might serve as a short-cut to India, where his masters were engaged in trade. He did not find what he sought, but opened the way to a lucrative traffic with the American savages, whose good graces the thrifty Dutch strove to cultivate. The French leader's introduction to the Iroquois had been as an enemy, but the explorer from Holland came as a friend: the Dutch reaped advantage from the contrast. posts. Dutch traders annually visited the region of Hudson River during the next few years. There was at first no Early Dutch attempt at colonization, for Holland just at that trading- time was not prepared to give offence to her old enemy, Spain, which still claimed all North America by the right of discovery and Pope Alexander's bull of partition. Nevertheless, the country was styled New Netherlands, and Holland recognized it as a legal dependency. A Dutch navigator, Adrian Block, as the result of an accident, spent a winter on either Manhattan or Long Island, and built a coasting-vessel (1614), the first ship constructed by Europeans on the North - 1609-1623.] New Netherlands. 197 Atlantic coast of America. A small trading-house, called Fort Nassau, was also erected this year on the site of Albany; a similar establishment, without defences, and surrounded by a few huts for traders, was built on Manhattan Island, at the mouth of the river, the following season (1615); a new Fort Nassau was afterwards (1623) set up on the Delaware River, four miles below the site of Philadelphia, but was soon abandoned. The New In 1615 the New Netherlands Company obtained a trading charter from the States-General of Holland. The corporation was granted a monopoly of the Dutch Netherlands fur traffic in New Netherlands for three years, Company. and conducted extensive operations between Albany and the Delaware, coastwise and in the interior. The Dutch thus far had not ventured to exercise political control over the New Netherlands. The country was still claimed by the English Virginia Company. The land originally granted to the Pilgrims from Leyden by the latter company was described as being "about the Hudson's River." We have seen how the party on the "Mayflower" were prevented by storms or possibly by the design of the captain — from reaching their destination and planting an English colony in the neighborhood of the Dutch trading posts. The Dutch In 1621 the Dutch West India Company came upon the scene as the successor of the New Netherlands Company. Its charter bade it "to advance the West India peopling of those fruitful and unsettled parts,” Company. and to "do all that the service of those countries and the profit and increase of trade shall require." The corporation was given almost absolute commercial and political power in all Dutch domains between Newfoundland and the Straits of Magellan, the home government reserving only the right to decline confirmation of colonial officers. Three years elapsed before the com pany attempted to plant a colony. Thirty families of Protestant Walloons a people of mixed Gallic and Teutonic blood, living in the southern provinces of Holland, whose offer to settle in Virginia had been rejected by the English- were sent over by the Dutch proprietors (1624) to their new possessions. The greater part of the emigrants went to Albany, which they styled Fort Orange; others were sent to the Delaware River colony; a small party went on to the Connecticut; a few settled on Long Island; and eight men stayed on Manhattan. These settlements, relying for their chief support on the fur-trade with the Indians, were quite successful, and the New Netherlands soon became an important group of commercial colonies. 84. Progress of the New Netherlands (1626-1664). In 1626 Peter Minuit, then director for the company, purchased Manhattan from the Indians, united all the The settlements united. settlements under one system of direction, and founded New Amsterdam (afterwards New York city) as the central trading depot. In every direction the trade of the New Netherlands grew. As the settlers seemed to be interested in commerce, and agricultural colonization did not flourish, the corporation secured from the States-General a new The patroon system. charter of "freedoms and exemptions" (1629), which they thought better adapted to the fostering of emigration. This document sought to transplant the European feudal system to the American wilds. Individuals, singly or in company, might purchase tracts of land from the Indians and plant colonies thereon, of which these proprietors were to be the patroons, or patrons. Each patroon thus establishing a colony of fifty persons upwards of fifteen years of age, was granted a tract as a perpetual inheritance," sixteen miles wide |